Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 95458 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95458 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
I stare up into her beautiful face. “Circe, you just killed one of my only friends in this fucked-up city.” I don’t want to spin through likely eventualities, but my brain doesn’t care what I want. Helen—now Ares—might not consider me on her side, but if she dies… And Cassandra. Gods know she won’t abandon Apollo, and she’s even more protective of him than Eros was of his mother. She’ll be cut down just like the rest of them.
I’ll lose them all.
“I truly am sorry.” Circe even looks it. That’s the most fucked-up part. She might be able to lie as easily as breathing, but she’s never been able to lie to me. She’s never bothered. She isn’t now, either. “But I have no intention of playing the martyr. It was him or me.”
I swallow hard. “You have to stop this.”
“I can’t, love. We passed the point of no return a long time ago, well before I ever set foot back on Olympian soil. All that’s left is to ensure the pieces fall where I need them to.”
That’s the problem. The pieces are people I’ve come to care about over the last decade. Not all of them—Olympus has more than its fair share of monsters—but enough. If I flee this room, then I’m allowing Circe to be driven by her grief and anger. More people will die, and I can stop it, even if I can’t stop her permanently. If I can restrain her…
I’m moving before a plan fully forms, grabbing her wrist and spinning her around so I can wrap my arm around her throat. If I can knock her unconscious, I can—
Something pricks my neck. I jerk back, taking the needle she just stuck in my neck with me. “Drugs. Again. How original.” I pull it from my body with shaking hands, but she’s already pressed the plunger. Warmth rushes through my body, thick and liquifying. I’m going to pass out. Damn it.
“You don’t get to take that tone when you attacked me.” She’s a little breathless, a little shocked, but Circe catches me as my legs turn to molten wax. As I suspected, she doesn’t let me hit the ground. “It would simplify my life if I could bear the thought of you dead—but I can’t. I also can’t let you kill me.”
“Wasn’t going to.” My lips and tongue feel strange and heavy. It’s not the same concoction she drugged me with last time. “Kill you.”
“I wasn’t going to take that chance. This drug won’t harm you. It will just keep you from moving until it wears off. I can’t let you be hurt, Hecate. Even now.” Circe half carries me to the couch and gently sets me down. She pulls a cotton swab from somewhere and presses it to my neck. Or I assume she does; I can’t feel a thing.
“Bullshit.” My lips are going numb, but I still manage to make my disbelief known. “Had it ready.”
She smiles, quick and sharp. “You know me, always prepared.” The smile fades away. “It wasn’t for you specifically. I’m back in Olympus. I won’t be caught unawares again.”
My mind is still racing even as my body goes completely limp and my head lolls against the couch. “Why not kill me?”
“You know why. You’re just being stubborn about admitting it. It’s easier to paint me as the villain than admit we want the same things. We’ve always wanted the same things. But I suppose that’s not the full truth, is it?”
She lifts my head carefully and arranges my braids around my shoulders. I don’t have to feel her touch to know it’s devastatingly gentle. Circe shakes her head ruefully. “It’s because I love you, you little fool. It will take you some time to forgive me for what I need to do, but I truly hope you will in the end.” She smiles sweetly, looking so much like the girl I gave my heart to all those years ago that I might die from longing. “Because you never stopped loving me, either.”
***
Atalanta
I want to sprint directly to the university and fight my way through the apparent mobs of people to get to Hermes. The only thing stopping me from attempting something so reckless is knowing I’ll just end up captive alongside her. Or, more likely, that I end up dead. Circe doesn’t have a history with me.
As much as it kills part of my soul to turn south from Juniper Bridge and head into the center of the upper city, it’s a necessary step. There are only two people on this side of the river who might help me—Dionysus and Apollo—and I know exactly where to find Apollo.
I don’t bother to search for a car. It’s a thirty-minute walk, but I need the time to get my head on straight. Apollo isn’t the biggest fan of Hermes under the best of circumstances, and since Minos’s party, he downright hates her. The only thing that might convince him is Cassandra. She’s where I place my hope.